Carl Jung: Suffering tends to isolate you

Carl Jung: Suffering tends to isolate you

The Symbolic Life: Miscellaneous Writings (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 18)

Suffering tends to isolate you.

However, understanding of it may lift you up somewhat In the case of psychological suffering, which always isolates the individual from the herd of so-called normal people, it is of the greatest importance to understand that the conflict is not a personal failure only, but at the same time a suffering common to all and a problem with which the whole epoch is burdened.

This general point of view lifts the individual out of himself and connects him with humanity. ~Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). In CW 18 (retitled) “The Tavistock Lectures” P.116

Stiffening and clinging is not all there is to develop throughout life – personality may be developed too.

The nearer we approach to the middle of life, and the better we have succeeded in entrenching ourselves in our personal attitudes and social positions, the more it appears as if we had discovered the right course and the right ideals and principles of behaviour.

For this reason we suppose them to be eternally valid, and make a virtue of unchangeably clinging to them. We overlook the essential fact that the social goal is attained only at the cost of a diminution of personality.

Many – far too many – aspects of life which should also have been experienced lie in the lumber-room among dusty memories; but sometimes, too, they are glowing coals under grey ashes. ~”The Stages of Life” (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 771

Image: The Knight at the Crossroads by Viktor Vasnetsov